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Greetings from Heather Stern

Greetings, everyone, and welcome once more to the world of The Answer
Gang.

I suppose you would think it obvious what the Peeve Of The Month is.
I'm actaully deeply saddened that this move became necessary, and in fact I
resisted the need at every turn. I resisted the CMS idea too - I think
it's a solution to a problem we don't actually have, and "yet another
slashdot" is not a unique magazine on the scene. But I had hopes that
a talented webmaster could bring a template engine out of its doldrums
and make something amazing and new in a basically already filled niche
of the web. In fact, they still might. But if it can't retain a
regular release schedule, it wouldn't be a Gazette:

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

Gazette \Ga*zette"\, n. [F. gazette, It. gazzetta, perh. from
gazetta a Venetian coin (see {Gazet}), said to have been the
price of the first newspaper published at Venice; or perh.
dim. of gazza magpie, a name perh. applied to the first
newspaper; cf. OHG. agalstra magpie, G. elster.]
A newspaper; a printed sheet published periodically; esp.,
the official journal published by the British government, and
containing legal and state notices.

With a basis in official matters (okay, who's perfect) but most
especially in a periodic nature, the only way for the Gazette
to retain its true nature is to remain... a periodical.

But enough of that. 'Tis the time of All Hallow's Eve, and everyone
is dressing up. Me, I'm dressing up my computer. There are some
people doing some really crazy and fun things with new computers. The
silliest that I've seen so far I have to say is the glowing sphere.
That guy's great. His set top box makes it look like that thing is now
a TARDIS or that the aliens who control "The Outer Limits" really have
left their control module visible in your living room. There a bunch of
toasters out there - really! I'm not kidding! Go visit
Mini-ITX.com if you don't
believe me. Cubes even. But the glowing sphere is a winner.

At a basically 7" square motherboard (170 mm, but who's counting) and
about an inch, inch and a half clearance above it, you have anything
from a 500 Mhz to 1 Ghz Cyrix or Eden chipset and most of the useful
peripherals already on board. If you're willing to call it 2.5"
clearance, get a riser card to let you put a PC card in sideways.

I don't know how it is out there with the rest of you but I can run
down to my local computer store here in the Silicon Valley and have my
pick of cases that have clear sections, glowing parts, mounting brackets
for ultraviolet lighting, and ... well I wasn't ready for this at the
time, so make sure you're sitting ... water cooled motherboards. With
somewhat yellow water that glows under blacklight.

Spoooooky. But not half as spooky as the idea that killing a part
of the cooling system isn't just a dead fan and maybe one of the hard
disks will run a risk of much early MTBF - mean time between failures,
the silicon lifeform's equivalent to risk of stroke and heart attack.
Water splattered all over the inside of a 2.3 or 3 Ghz gaming monster
sounds even spookier.

Okay. So maybe I just should stick with a normal case with sort of
bubbly effects on the front. One popular model of this is called the
"alien glow". Sounds like a GIMP filter. If I feel really inventive
maybe I can paint a mural on the side of one of the cases whose sides
pop off easily so techies can get at the parts.

And then, there's making my desktop a little more fun! In this I
have an unfair advantgae. The window manager I happen to favor is
Enlightenment (16 of course. Will 17 never release? Probably.) and
there is an uncountable community of goth kids out there who
really enjoy the spooky backgrounds, razor thin lines, and
dark colors that movie magic reminds us is supposed to be spooky.
Combine that with a decent pile of wallpapers from the K desktop - named
things like "Whirling Spirit" - and all I need is a pumpkin. TuxEyes
can be customized, I think. So someone ought to give it a pumpkin and
flickering littel triangle eyes! Or I can set the root window to
pick up photos of storms and change them every once in a while. Of
course I have a great big hard disk, so loading it up with apropos
music for the spooky little visitors seems perfect too.

Sound, light, Thunder, am I missing anything? Of course. I'll have
to consider getting a remote mouse, or setting my computer up for LIRC -
infrared remote control - so I can toggle the spooky effects without
touching them. Maybe I should set my /etc/hosts file to recognize 127.0.0.1
as localghost. while I'm in here.

Well kids, it's time to wait at the door with the chocolates. For
any of you who haven't run off to the parties, I suggest that a
dessicated pumpkin will not make a good case. Try a big Millenium
Falcon or Enterprise model instead. And... pleasant dreeeeeaams ...
mwa hahahahah ha ha!